Happy Solstice! There is a small party planned tonight to celebrate the shortest day of the year. The daylight tomorrow is supposed to be 7 seconds longer, and we need every second here :)

We made a small group outing to central Norway yesterday to visit Røros.
Røros is a very old mining community about 2 hours east of Trondheim (by train). There was an operating copper mine there for over 300 years until it was finally shut down in the 1970's. Many of the buildings in the central part of town have been maintained in their historic appearance, and the original copper smelting building is now a large museum.
We all basically learned from the museum that being a miner really sucked unless you were the guy in charge. Isn't that the way it always works?

The train on the way from Trondheim was quite packed with people going on holiday, but on the way back we had a whole car to ourselves basically. We were joined by Leif's brother and his family from Paris, including young Madeline, who is only 6 months old but already has a French passport.

Joel and I were greatly interested in what seems to be the main form of transport in Røros, which is apparently kick sleds. Sorry I didn't get a picture of one, but it was basically a wooden sled with metal runners and handle bars that stick up. People stand up and push with one foot and zip around town on them, and if they have kids or groceries they just strap them on the front. Anyway that looked like great fun, especially going down the hills. We read in the tourist pamphlet that you can rent them, unfortunately we got to town right after the tourist office closed. Maybe next time.